Smartphone, the abridged version: Ars reviews the HP Veer

The latest entry for the webOS platform, the HP Veer, is an unusually compact …

The webOS app store is pretty limited, and isn't quite the fertile ground for innovation that the Android or iOS stores are. The essentials are on there, though where you could easily find good free apps for iOS or Android, good webOS apps are liable to cost two or three dollars. For example, there is no free official Twitter app for webOS, but the reliable alternative Tweed is priced at $2.99.

The App Catalog is easy to use, if expensive in places.

The Veer's messaging interface.

Poking at the screen produces a target animation underneath your finger, so you can see how your jabs are registering.

Though we got better at typing on the phone with some practice, it still doesn't seem to be a sustainable long-term activity on the Veer. The software that governs text input doesn't help, either. There's no holding down on the screen to scroll through a text field so you can make sure you land in the right place. Instead, webOS responds to jabs only at the location you want the cursor to be, and it briefly shows a small rippling target where your finger landed. The targets help, but jabs are not a particularly effective way to navigate text when the screen is so small.

The webOS software does perform autocorrects (a function that can be turned off, which would be welcome on other platforms in certain situations), but doesn't appear to know its own name: "Veer" is persistently corrected to "ever." The autocorrect also doesn't give up when you make a mistake in its eyes.

For example, when you type a word on iOS or Android and it gets corrected against your will, the phone will leave it alone if you go back to the middle of the word and retype it. The Veer, in contrast, will not drop the issue. You can place the cursor into the middle of "ever" and try to change it back to "Veer," but once you move beyond the word, the phone will insist over and over that you meant "ever." Never mind that "veer" is, on its own, a word, meaning "to change direction suddenly." The irony: it abounds. If you choose this phone for yourself, may you never stray from the Abridged Digest of the Cliff's Notes of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Email in webOS. On the Veer, the fonts just get tinier, and tinier, and tinier...

The Veer's Web browser is doing the best it can with the small amount of space it has, and the buttons are laid out well enough that they don't cover too much real estate. Back and forward buttons occupy the lower left corner, and a refresh/stop button is in the bottom right corner.

As with many other apps, a menu button in the top left corner of the Web browser lets us access some other Web utilities like bookmarking, sharing, or adding the page to the Web launcher. Choosing to share a link opens up another card in the same hand as the browser with the email client, but if you want to share a link in another app, you have a few steps.

WebOS eschews the approach commonly found in other mobile OSes of tapping a field to open edit options like select, cut, and paste. Instead, those options are packed into the aforementioned tiny menu button, under an "Edit" submenu. Not only that, but the menu closes after you select one of the options. So approaching an unhighlighted URL we want to share, we have to go through the menu three times: Menu > Edit > Select All, Menu > Edit > Copy, change applications, and then Menu > Edit > Paste.

Still a straightforward process, but a few taps more than in other operating systems. Like past webOS incarnations, the bitty menu button isn't trivial to press either, so there may be a few misdirected taps mixed in for good measure.

Tapping the bottom right corner notifications pull up short descriptions.

Another tiny set of icons along the bottom right of the screen function as message alerts from apps like Facebook and email. Tapping the icons brings up a list of messages and short blurbs from them, and tapping them switches you over to the relevant application. If you have more than one message in an application, a bubble appears on the app's icon telling you how many there are.

The Veer also continues to carry the Synergy banner to great effect, and we have to say we wish this is something other phone OSes would adopt. Immediately. Messaging is handled by contacts rather than programs, and you can send messages through AIM, GTalk, SMS, and other media from a single window. You can pick the medium you want your message to go through from a dropdown menu in the top right corner.

A menu in the top right corner of the messaging apps lets you choose one of a few destinations for your message.

WebOS's Just Type functionality lets you update your facebook status with your favorite song lyrics in one motion.